A Sociology of Religious Emotion by Linda Woodhead, Ole Riis

This well timed publication goals to alter the best way we expect approximately faith by means of placing emotion again onto the time table. It demanding situations a bent to over-emphasise rational features of faith, and rehabilitates its embodied, visceral and affective dimensions. opposed to the view that spiritual emotion is a simply inner most topic, it bargains a brand new framework which exhibits how spiritual feelings come up within the different interactions among human brokers and spiritual groups, human brokers and items of devotion, and groups and sacred symbols. It provides parallels and contrasts among non secular feelings in ecu and American historical past, in different cultures, and in modern western societies. by way of taking feelings heavily, A Sociology of non secular Emotion sheds new mild at the energy of faith to form primary human orientations and motivations: hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, loves and hatreds.

Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty choices of significant Western writing approximately depression and its similar stipulations by way of philosophers, medical professionals, spiritual and literary figures, and sleek psychologists. really interdisciplinary, it's the first such anthology. because it lines Western attitudes, it finds a talk throughout centuries and continents because the authors interpret, reply, and construct on each one other's paintings.

During this quantity, Zautra illustrates how event with tough or demanding emotional occasions can, opposite to renowned trust, be helpful; for instance, our skill to evolve to emphasize might be stronger by way of experiencing tricky moments of emotional depth. Zautra masterfully integrates learn and conception on emotion and pressure, settling on a distinct and significant position for annoying existence occasions.

'How our fast-forward minds make whatever out of not anything. From a therapeutic placebo to a run at the financial institution, the self-fulfilling power of expectancies has been saw for years. yet now neuroscientists and psychologists are starting to remedy the mysteries of our expectant mind and making use of their findings to box starting from medication to activities to schooling.

Taking as their stage the whole of American society, the authors of Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al. 14 There are ways of resolving the contradiction between these competing narratives of emotional modernization. Lupton (1998) suggests that the intensiﬁcation of self-control and bodily discipline has, as its corollary, the incitement of pleasures of transgression and expression. Thus modern tourist and entertainment industries sell emotional experiences, and vicarious emotional experience is sought through the mass media and celebrity culture.

Religious emotion can even less easily be separated out from cultural symbols than other forms of everyday emotion can be detached in analysis from their material and symbolic images, stages, settings, and props. Clearly Durkheim cannot be accused of ignoring the importance of symbols for collective emotion. Both he and Randall Collins recognize that such symbols can somehow ‘store’ emotions between ritual gatherings, and act as a shared focus of that emotion within the group setting. They also notice that the capacity of symbolic objects to evoke powerful emotions seems to increase with the size of the group for which the symbol is moving.

They also notice that the capacity of symbolic objects to evoke powerful emotions seems to increase with the size of the group for which the symbol is moving. The most powerful of all are those that symbolize and help constitute an entire society; they can be animate (an animal, a charismatic leader), inanimate (a national ﬂag, a cruciﬁx), or intermediate (a relic of a saint, a memoralized leader). Inspired by Durkheim, Maurice Halbwachs (1992) took this analysis further by emphasizing the importance of the past kept alive in the present by ‘collective memory’.